


The Voices of Reason

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drugs, Dubious Consent, M/M, Rough Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:34:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It could have been so much worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Voices of Reason

  
It's dark when they get back.

When the hospital lets them go.

There are no more drugs in their bloodstream. Though John knows what they both look like.

The moment he'd been able to think straight he'd catalogued his own injuries in much the same way as he assumes Sherlock had done. Though the way he feels about them, the way they lay like an accusation in colour across his skin - he's not sure how to feel about that.

There are bruises, the scattered impressions of fingertips on his back, across his forearm. Still vivid enough to ache. They carry on up his arms, not always bruises, sometimes nails broke through the skin and left curves of blood. That's not the last of it, he has cuts on his throat and shoulder, two of his fingers are broken.

But it could have been worse.

He'd seen the murder victims. The other people who'd been drugged.

It could have been so much worse.

  
 _~The upside down curve of a chair looks strangely threatening, legs pointing up towards the ceiling, tumbled and so easy to break. It's unreasonably close, too close. John can see the grain in the wood._

 _He's the one who let it fall, sent its occupant crashing to the ground._

 _He's the one who has his hands curved round a column of flesh so pale that it would bruise on a touch. It doesn't need the force he's putting to bear on it._

 _There's the heavy slam of a knee into his back, and long fingers dig into his forearms hard enough to break the skin._

 _It's all a matter of leverage.~_

  
John decides that they need tea, because this feel like a tea situation rather than a coffee situation.

He makes his way to the kitchen and Sherlock limps silently after him. He looks as fractured as John feels, but he's showing almost no sign of it. He's perfectly and completely composed. Which is more than a little unnerving.

The flat is a mess.

The flat is exactly how they left it, full of pieces and smashed glass and blood. It's all over the carpet.

Enough of it to look raw, enough of it to feel guilty over, John thinks.

The kettle still works though. It starts to rush in a way that's loud and insistent but _normal._

It's almost as if Sherlock can hear him asking 'why' in his head.

"The voyeuristic nature of it," he says hoarsely. "The simple desire to watch people tear each other apart."

Sherlock slides in behind him, all the way into his space. The same way he always does, like nothing is different, nothing at all. Like John didn't do anything wrong.

"Simple desire?" John repeats, and he makes it sound so flat. He has to wonder if he's still numb from the painkillers. Though Sherlock's probably on more than him.

"Base desire," Sherlock offers. It's not a correction, it's a rephrasing for John's benefit.

John's tempted to ask if that's why they aren't dead. But he can't bring himself to. He can't bring himself to admit to it. Because that brutal, faceless, greedy thing is not him.

He's not like that.

He makes tea, puts too much sugar in and nearly gags on it. Could you treat yourself for shock without even realising it?

Sherlock's frowning at his own mug, expression blank. The break in his lip looks raw and untidy, a flaw in his perfect mask.

John knows he did that.

There's still a smear of red on Sherlock's throat from where it ran. More of it has dried thick on the back of John's hand, he hasn't washed them yet, hasn't had a chance. He should do that. God, he should do that.

  
 _~ Sherlock tries to claw John's neck open with his nails, skin breaking in the brightness of pain. John pulls an arm back, lets it drop fast and hard - watches Sherlock's head rock on his neck, watches dark hair press into the carpet, throat one long, pale stretch._

 _The rush of hot, sharp satisfaction is so good he does it again, harder._

 _The lash of crimson that opens on Sherlock's mouth feels like a gift ~_

  
"Everyone else affected managed to kill the people they were left with, or to kill each other. We should consider ourselves lucky," Sherlock says. The words are careful, clinical. But there's a bruised rawness to his voice.

"I don't feel lucky," John tells him over his mug.

  
 _~ Everything tears, everything tears all the way down to skin. John doesn't know if they're trying to kill each other or not anymore, because there's so much skin under the blood._

 _It's a discordant mix of pale and bright. He can taste it on his tongue, taste it underneath him. Sherlock is all teeth and elegance and John wants to tear him to pieces. Lay him out on the ground and leave him covered in bruises, all colour and sensation and need. Sherlock's fingers are pushed into his skin like he's daring him to._

 _His smile is red, bright red and beautiful. ~_

  
Sherlock helps him take his coat off, since his shoulder is not up to twisting his way out of it on his own. His fingers are cold on John's neck, and he remembers - he knows, intimately, what they felt like across every inch of his bare skin, the narrow, aggressive, greedy press of them.

He knows what they feel like clenched together and slammed into the edge of his jaw.

It's a spike of sense memory so hard that John has to fight not to flinch.

  
 _~ Sherlock hisses air through his teeth, when John opens him up. He's quiet for one fractured second when John fits them together. He can hear himself speaking, but he can't make out the words. He knows they're vicious, knows they're brutal and obscene. He's so deep it feels like bleeding out, and they're still fighting, all rawness that they just can't stop, can't sate._

 _John wants to speak then, but he can't, he **can't** , because there are hands in his hair, nails digging in, breaking him, pulling him down, all the way down and legs tighten around his waist hard enough to make him gasp air._

 _The rough drag of his name slides out between Sherlock's teeth._

 _John had made him beg, made his voice go low and whispery and wrecked like he'd never heard it before. Like he'd never hear it again. ~_

  
"Are we ok?" John asks quietly.

"We're fine," Sherlock says calmly. Which is a lie, a lie that's not even trying to disguise itself as anything else. It's the most naked lie that Sherlock has ever told.


End file.
